


Books

by marikunin



Series: Sehnsucht [9]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, Canon Character of Color, Canon Disabled Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:56:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9149734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marikunin/pseuds/marikunin
Summary: When you're sixteen and are officially told you're the Avatar, you look up your predecessors. It takes 3.5 seconds for you to feel intimidated.





	

When you're sixteen and are officially told you're the Avatar, you look up your predecessors. It takes 3.5 seconds for you to feel intimidated.

  
You've known of your identity since you were eight, but since the White Lotus came to your house, the weight of your role has begun to sink in. You grew up in a Christian home, so you were taught the first Avatar was Abel. Who was killed when he was likely just a young man.

How encouraging.

Other biblical Avatars included Moses, Esther, Elijah, Joseph and of course Jesus Himself. Not intimidating at all. By which you mean HOLY FUCK WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO HOW WILL YOU LIVE UP TO-

Ahem.

Your anxiety was starting to get the better of you there. Thankfully, just about everyone is looking up info on the Avatar since the Order of the White Lotus announced that they’d found the newest one. You blended in with the crowd, but then again you still don’t look your age what with your baggy tshirt, messy ponytail and sweatpants.

First you look at your school’s library. Naturally, all the books on the Avatars are taken out. All the good ones anyway. You take out a small tome on nonbenders and asceticism and head to your local library.  
  
This one is a lot better, luck wise. The local library is just _bigger_ , and it has all these online subscriptions to databases that you wont be able to afford for several more years. You use the computer to look up books (thank God you memorized the basic Dewey Decimal system a few years ago!) that are in various sections of the library. Bending and the Avatar have been a part of human history since…forever, basically, so there’s a little bit about them in each section.  
  
You do mean every section. Bending and how it works in the science section, the animals man learned bending from influencing human thought in the philosophy section, even the strange creatures that supposedly populated the Spirit World in the metaphysics section. 

Finally, you sit down with an issue of _Bending and Religion Quarterly_ , _Nonbenders Both Good and Bad_ , and the ridiculously thick book with super tiny font called the _Ultimate Book of Avatars Both Lost and Found_. You go through the first two rather quickly, as they contained stuff that you learned either in church or in high school history class already. 

The third is a real gem, and you already know it’ll be keeping you occupied for several nights coming. You take it out, stick it in your backpack, and ride your bike back home.

Once you run out of time to keep the book, you use your birthday money to buy a copy of it to go in your room. Even at your current age of 27, you still consult it. 

Now you start getting little mini visions when you read it though. You’ll be reading about, say, Avatar Joan/Jeanne d'Arc, and then you sort of slump over the book and suddenly you’re in medieval France, laying waste to the English armies with the might of the Avatar State. 

Another time, you were reading about the Crusades. You forgot which one. The words blurred on the page and you were a Muslim boy in a turban and with a sword, fighting against the Christian invaders. A barbarian’s sword stabbed you in the gut and you died on the battlefield, only 15 years old. One of the many Lost Avatars.

You lean back in your chair and look away from your airbending books to ponder about the Found Avatars you’ve learned about.


End file.
